Jamestown and Plymouth Compare and Contrast
Jamestown and Plymouth were two separate voyages set for America with different ideas and goals thought out for each. One of these voyages was coming to America so that they could have a better life for themselves, by making a permanent settlement where they could start their lives and their children’s lives again. The other was for economic reasons from a company in London that just wanted to obtain a larger market for manufactured goods coming from England.
These voyages were improvements from what we knew of our world back in the 1400’s. Both voyages were varied a lot from one another but meet some of the same obstacles and likenesses. Each journey had things that set them back, and a lot of them weren’t even related to weather. One of the major setbacks was that a lot of people didn’t want to work. The work was very hard, they were starting a whole life new, and since they were, they would need to collect material for homes, if they didn’t have enough equipment for their work, they would have to start making tools which would tire them out fast.
The work that they did ended up doing good for the settlers on both sides as a whole at least even if they were set back in the beginning of their time in the new world. The Jamestown voyage happened almost thirteen years before the Plymouth Voyage to America took place. In 1607, 104 men landed in what is now called Virginia. This journey was mostly for economic purposes from a company in London. The creators of the company wanted to expand English trade and obtain a wider market for English manufactured goods. They came on ships from England, and the names of the ships were the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery.
They became the first permanent English settlement in the new world now known as America. The Plymouth voyage took place in 1620 and there were 102 settlers that came on this journey. This voyage was for people from England that wanted a different sort of environment, with different people and laws. These people were in search of a better life for themselves and their families with fewer problems than when they were in England. The people no longer had to worry about how their personal beliefs differed from others, and they didn’t need to abide by the same rules as the government that they had in England.
This voyage is the one which mainly shaped the world that we live in now, with laws and beliefs used and allowed even as far back as the 1600’s. Jamestown was situated in the lands of the Tsenacommacah nation of Algonquian Indians in the eastern part of Virginia. The chief of over two dozen tribes in the nation was called Powhatan by the settlers. The Indians had peace for many years before to the arrival of the English, and while they were careful around the new settlers, they did not fear them. Hostile Europeans who landed in North America decades before 1607 were common knowledge among the Indians.
Indians respected strength they believed Europeans had and were amazed by their weapons. Even so they tested the settler’s strength whenever they could. Settlers sometime stole corn from the Indians and Indians sometime stole tools from the English. Such theft occasionally led to fighting back which ended in the loss of life on both sides. Plymouth was settled in the lands of the Wampanoag nation Algonquian Indians in southeastern Massachusetts. The chief of the Wampanoag was named Massasoit. Several years before the Pilgrim’s landing the Wampanoag were ravaged by an epidemic.
Even with their earlier epidemic, they also feared attack from the Tarrentine Indians which were north of them, and the Narragansetts that were west. Massasoit noticed some common interests he shared with the colonists. Massasoit’s nation needed protection from the other Indian tribes and the colonists needed supplies, and most importantly, knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness. John Carver, who was the first governor of Plymouth, and Massasoit agreed to a peace treaty in 1621 in which they swore to come to each other’s aid, protect each other from insurrection, and never to steal from each other.
Tolerance the Pilgrims and Wampanoag showed each other and the peace they worked to maintain were unique in the 17th century. From time to time, each had to yield to the other to preserve peace and address concerns of their constituents, but owing to Bradford’s and Massasoit’s leadership, peace survived for over 40 years, well after the death of each man. Two examples illustrate this good relationship. Jamestown and Plymouth have a lot in common, like both having contact with the Native Americans, both coming from England, each voyage took place in a different year, and they both sailed to America.
On the other hand, Jamestown and Plymouth had quite a bit of things that were different from each other for example, their reason to leave England, and the amount of people who came on each voyage. Nevertheless both contributed greatly to present American heritage of law, custom, government, religion, and heritage. Therefore Jamestown and Plymouth were very important to modern America, and we wouldn’t be where we are today without these two groups.
